When it comes to campaigning for office, there are some things a politician simply can’t do.

For example, a candidate for public office can’t openly affiliate with any person, group or entity that has any questionable record. Doing so automatically associates the candidate with the negative public reception that entity can have.

Somebody needs to tell that to a couple of South Carolina Republicans, though, who are both having significant portions of their campaigns operated by a company affiliated with adult entertainment.

Summerville Media Group designed and operates the websites of two Republican candidates in Dorchester County – Ed Carter for State House 97 and Bill Hearn, the incumbent County Councilman for District 6.

It’s when that latter link is explored that things get interesting. Summerville Media Group’s site not only offers additional verification that it designed those political pages (it has images of Carter’s site posted as a sample its web design, for example), but it lists other sites designed and maintained by SMG, too – including (get ready) “Sexy Skin Magazine.”

SMG lists “Sexy Skin” as a proud example of its site design and online marketing.

Using only its SMG page description as source, “Sexy Skin” seems to promote itself as a hub for amateur porn, inviting persons to offer their own photographs for a weekly contest.

“Do you have what it takes?” that website asks, inviting ladies to submit their own pictures. The winner of its “Hottie of the Week” contest can get “a chance to shoot a ‘Feature Layout’ with a Sexy Skin Magazine feature staff photographer.”

SMG affiliation with “Sexy Skin” delves a little deeper, too. It also does “a lot of the Photo Edits of the girls,” its site states, as well as “design the magazine covers for all the issues.”

(Another site claiming affiliation with “Sexy Skin,” and making the exact same “Photo Edits of the girls” claims of personal contribution to it, is that of 106 Designs, which apparently is another name used by SMG. Adding to the GOP:Porn affiliation, 106 Designs lists the website of Dorchester County’s Republican state Rep. Chris Murphy as one of its projects.)

This certainly seems to be an inappropriate affiliation for any politician to have (let alone openly acknowledge, as indicated by their sites’ “proudly powered by” links), but this is a pretty standard theme for South Carolina Republicans.

Take Roland Corning, for example. This former state representative was an assistant deputy Attorney General for the state when he was found in a cemetery one afternoon with an 18-year-old strip dancer – and Viagra. Corning’s a SC Republican.

So is Beverly Russell, who in fact was on the executive committee of the state’s Republican Party. Russell admitted under oath that he had molested his teenaged stepdaughter for over nine years.

Then there’s former Gov. Mark Sanford, who was busted for using taxpayer dollars to fund his extramarital affair in Argentina. Sanford’s GOP, too.

And let’s not forget the longstanding Republican segregationist Strom Thurmond, who impregnated a 16-year-old African-American woman, and then denied being the father of the child throughout his 47-year term in U.S. Congress.

(This isn’t limited to South Carolina Republican officials, please note. Consider the long listing on www.republicansexoffenders.com, which apparently couldn’t keep up with the multitude of consistent news releases of such incidents – it hasn’t been updated since mid-2008.)

This soft-porn affiliation isn’t extended to the Democratic opponents of Carter and Hearn, though. Incumbent Dist. 97 Rep. Patsy Knight has her website maintained by Harbor Light, which includes in its long portfolio not a single site that a kid couldn’t see.

And the same can be said for Miriam Birdsong, the Democratic candidate for Hearn’s county council Dist. 6 spot. Birdsong’s site (still under some construction at the moment) is being made by John Kauth, a photographer with some dazzle in website design.

There are no accusations of reading dirty magazines or visting porn shops cast upon either of these Republican candidates, but if Hearn says he will “lead by example,” and if Carter claims “personal responsibility” as an attribute, then perhaps both should live up to those claims by answering to the affiliation their political campaigns now carry.